Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | A written crochet pattern, delivered as a PDF. The file itself is titled The Spider Who Waits Under Your Mug. |
| What you make | A granny-square coaster with a spider sitting in the middle of its web: a small round body with eight legs and a bobble head, a white web of twelve spokes worked out from behind it, and two rounds that turn the web into a square. |
| Finished size | About 10.5 cm (4 in) square — the smallest of the Halloween squares, because its centre is a short single crochet body and a web rather than four rounds of double crochet. |
| Hook | 3.0 mm — the only hook in the pattern. |
| Yarn | 5-ply combed cotton, about a DK weight, in three colours: one for the spider, white for the web, and one for the square. The spider and the square can be any two colours you like. |
| Yarn needed | About 4 g (10 yd) for the spider, 5 g (10 yd) of white for the web and 8 g (20 yd) for the square. |
| Time to make | About 1 hour. |
| Skill level | Confident beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: joined rounds, a bobble, working into chain spaces, and a granny square. |
| Techniques used | Magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one where it began · chain, slip stitch, single crochet, half double crochet, double crochet and treble crochet · the single crochet increase · a round of slip stitches, and working into them · single crochet back along a chain, into the back bumps · the 3-dc bobble · a starting chain that counts as a stitch · working into chain spaces · several stitches into one stitch or one space · skipping stitches to open the spaces of a granny square · closing a round with a sewn join · changing colour for each new part · weaving in ends |
| Worked in | Joined rounds. The web’s first two rounds start with ch 3 that counts as a double crochet; every other round starts with a chain that does not. Every slip stitch in the pattern is marked tight or loose, and the line always says which. |
| Number of pieces | One. |
| Numbered rounds | 8 — three for the body, three for the web, two for the square. The legs and the head are one strip, written out step by step instead. |
| Count checkpoints | Six: 12 at the end of the body’s round 2; the legs and head placed, four legs on each side of the head; 12 double crochet spokes at the end of the web’s round 1; 48 single crochets at the end of the web’s round 3; at the end of the square’s round 1, all 48 used, twelve along each side, 14 stitches between corners; 4 groups a side at the end of round 2. |
| The spider | Six single crochets, then twelve, then a ring of twelve loose slip stitches. Straight on from that ring, without fastening off: four legs, the head, four more legs. Each leg is a chain of 5 with 4 single crochets back along it, and the head is a 3-dc bobble. |
| The web | Worked in white from behind the body: twelve double crochet spokes with ch-2 between them, then twelve with ch-3, then closed with 48 single crochets — one on each spoke, three in each space. |
| The round that turns it square | The square’s round 1 goes into the front loop of each of the web’s 48 single crochets, together with the strand just behind it. Every side is written out — [tr, dc], dc, 2 hdc, 4 sc, 2 hdc, dc, [dc, tr] — and the first corner lines up with the spider’s tail. |
| The last round | A classic granny round: 4 groups of 3 double crochet along each side, and 3 dc, ch 2, 3 dc at each corner. |
| Sewing | None. The last round closes with a sewn join through its starting chain, and that is the only needle work. |
| Also needed | One stitch marker, a blunt yarn needle and scissors. |
| Pages | 15 |
| Terminology | US crochet terms |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written and your coaster comes out a mirror image of the photos. Nothing else changes: the head and tail sit straight across from each other with four legs on each side, and the square starts from the spoke in line with the tail. |
| Delivery | Download link on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out several rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you. A missing stitch on the last side of a square is exactly that kind of wrong: the corner is a little off, the next round does not quite fit, and there is nothing on the page to tell you it wasn’t you.
On this one, there is. The checkpoint at the end of the square’s first round has you count the last side before you close it.
No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and handing it to someone without an apology.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
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